Here are 25 Kickass and Interesting Facts About Whales.
1-5 Interesting Facts About Whales
1. When a whale dies and its carcass falls into the Bathyal or Abyssal zone of the ocean floor, it can sustain a complex localized ecosystem of deep-sea organisms for decades. This is called a “whale fall”. – Source
2. Scientists were monitoring whale stress levels by analyzing their poop and found that their stress plummeted immediately following the 9/11 attacks. It turns out this was due to all ship traffic being halted which quieted the oceans of low frequency noise, which the whales use to communicate – Source
3. There are whales alive today who were born before Moby d*ck was written (1851). – Source
4. There is a single whale somewhere in the ocean that transmits calls at a frequency no other whales transmit at. It has been called “the world’s loneliest whale.” – Source
5. One unique danger of working in a tryworks (whaling industry furnace) was that a rotting pregnant whale could fill with gas and burst, “ejecting a fetus the size of a motor vehicle with sufficient force to kill a man.” – Source
6-10 Interesting Facts About Whales
6. In captivity, a killer whale is usually confined to a small pool, where it spends much time at the surface and often has to swim in a circle. Consequently, the tissue in its dorsal fin doesn’t get much of a workout, and starts to atrophy (wastes away due to lack of use), and it falls over. – Source
7. A bowhead whale caught in 2007 had a harpoon embedded in its neck from 1880, making it at least 130 years old. – Source
8. Killer whales know that great white sharks need to move to breathe, and will hold them upside down in order to kill them. – Source
9. The roar from the T-Rex in Jurassic Park is a baby elephant mixed with a tiger and an alligator, and its breath is a whale’s blow. – Source
10. Nursing whale’s milk is similar in constancy as toothpaste. It must be thick, else it will dissipate into the surrounding water. – Source
11-15 Interesting Facts About Whales
11. The arteries in the heart of a blue whale is large enough for an average human being to pass through – Source
12. An elephant weighs less than a blue whale’s tongue – Source
13. Killer whales, dolphins and beluga whales only sleep one hemisphere of the brain at a time so that they can breathe while resting – Source
14. Whales are sometimes born with a leg or two – Source
15. The blue whale is not only the largest animal on Earth, but is also the largest animal to have ever existed on Earth at any point. – Source
16-20 Interesting Facts About Whales
16. Keiko the whale from “Free Willy” was put into an unhealthy, small pool in Mexico City where he was malnourished after achieving fame from the movie – Source
17. Blue whale calves are born weighing 3 tons, gain 8 pounds an hour and grow 1.5 inches per day. – Source
18. Whale vomit is worth tens of thousands of pounds and is used in the production of perfume – Source
19. If a dead whale is found on a British beach, the head belongs to the king and the tail to the queen. – Source
20. In 1970, a dead sperm whale on an Oregon beach was blown up with dynamite in an attempt to get rid of the decomposing corpse. They used 20 cases of dynamite instead of 20 sticks. Flying debris from the blast destroyed the roof of a nearby car, and onlookers were covered with whale particles.
21-25 Interesting Facts About Whales
21. Beluga whales that suffer the loss of a child will sometimes “adopt” inanimate objects such as plants, rocks, and, in one case, a caribou carcass. – Source
22. A whale’s throat is only large enough to roughly let a beach ball pass through, whereas its mouth can store up to 90 metric tons of food and water. – Source
23. In the past when whaling was widely practiced, a pod of orcas in Southern Australia would notify whalers of the presence of baleen whales, and assist in the kill in return for the lips and tongue. – Source
24. Moby d*ck is based on the true story of a whale that attacked and sunk a whaling ship, leaving the survivors to face 90 brutal days at sea (complete with cannibalism). – Source
25. Japan used $30 million of their Tsunami relief funds to support whaling – Source
comment number 22 doesn’t state which whale it is, which would make the fact more interesting